© Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesHouseboats are dwarfed by the steep banks of Lake Oroville last month in Oroville, California.
California has expanded a drought emergency declaration to a large swath of the nation's most populated state amid "acute water supply shortages" in northern and central parts of California.
The declaration, expanded by Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday, now includes 41 of 58 counties, covering 30% of California's nearly 40 million people. The US drought monitor shows most of the state and the American west is in extensive drought just a few years after California emerged from a punishing multiyear dry spell.
Officials fear an extraordinary dry spring presages a wildfire season like last year, when flames burned a record 6,562 sq mi(16,996 sq km).
The declaration comes as Newsom prepares to propose more spending on short- and long-term responses to dry conditions. The Democrat last month had declared an emergency in just two counties north of San Francisco - Mendocino and Sonoma.
The expanded declaration includes the counties in the Klamath River, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Tulare Lake watersheds across much of the northern and central parts of the state.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides about a third of the state's water, was at just 59% of average on 1 April, when it is normally at its peak.
Comment: The coronavirus crisis, in addition to earth changes affecting crop growth, and the losing value of currency which is set to get much worse in Western nations in particular, have made the production, availability, purchasing and distribution of food - a MAJOR global issue the likes of which we haven't seen in generations.
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